Enhanced nucleation of oxide precipitates during Czochralski silicon crystal growth with nitrogen doping

Thermal stability of oxide precipitate nuclei has been investigated for Czochralski silicon crystals with nitrogen doping. The experimental result indicates that generation of the grown-in oxide precipitate nuclei stable over 800 °C is enhanced by nitrogen doping. On the other hand, even though we confirmed this existence, doped nitrogen shows no influence on further oxide precipitate nucleation during the isothermal annealing at 600 °C after an epitaxial silicon growth process. Thus, it is found that the nitrogen doping only enhances the oxide precipitate nucleation at higher temperature during crystal cooling. The enhanced precipitate nucleation during the cooling is considered to be through excess vacancies which are suppressed to agglomerate by nitrogen.